Please join us for a special event celebrating Humana’s launch of Freewheelin, a free community bike-sharing program. Representatives from Humana and the city of Mesa will make brief remarks and then take an inaugural ride. Members of the community are encouraged to join the group ride on a Freewheelin bike or one of their own. *The 20 Freewheelin bikes are first come, first served. Come and enjoy the refreshments and fun Freewheelin gear.

Located at Humana’s Guidance Center, Freewheelin is a program offering anyone 18 or over a free bike ride. The Guidance Center will supply a free helmet and offer group rides led by a bicycle expert. To participate, users need to bring an id and credit card and attend a bicycle safety information session.

We look forward to seeing you at this community event.

Event Details:
Monday, October 26
10:30am
Humana Guidance Center
5943 E. McKellips Rd. Ste 106
Mesa, AZ 85215

While I’m quite active on Twitter, both personally and on behalf of biketempe.org, I don’t consider the term “micro blogging” applicable to what I do on Twitter on either account. As far as Facebook is concerned I mostly use it to read everyone’s silly status updates or use it as a tool to connect with bicyclists on behalf of, again, biketempe.org via our Facebook Group.

My love affair with bicycles was rekindled many years ago (late 90′s) after I purchased a 6 speed Huffy beach cruiser at Wallymart. I hadn’t ridden much since my BMX days many years prior to that. I really didn’t care to know too much about bikes except “mount, pedal, enjoy, repeat”.  A friend and I would regularly go for 10 to 12 mile rides through a system of neighborhood greenbelts that eventually spit out into a small park. Here we’d test the limits of traction and pedal clearance while riding in ever tighter endless loops around a basketball court. The traction that fat beach cruiser tires afford on a clean, smooth basketball court is pretty amazing. It’s no wonder physics was my favorite high school subject.

I took a short break from cycling after moving away from the neighborhood with the nice green belt paths. It wasn’t a conscious decision and I didn’t miss riding. In the early 2000′s I got a dog, a husky named Sierra to be exact. Huskies are a breed that love to run (and pull). I began taking Sierra for bike rides using a harness and attaching an appropriate length leash to the handlebars of my bike.  In short, she loved it and not long after I rescued another husky, named Hannah, and have been biking the both of them a few times a week since the mid 2000′s.

I finally made the jump from that Huffy beach cruiser to a real bike in 2007. I picked up a one year old Marin Northside Trail mountain bike on Craigslist. Soon after I began biking and/or commuting as much as 60 miles per week. In October of 2008 I felt compelled to become more active in the cycling community and threw my name into the ring as a nominee for the Tempe Bicycle Action Group board of directors. Due to a board member stepping down, all 7 nominees were elected to the board.

I brought the organization out of the internet dark ages by migrating the majority of operations to Google Apps. This move has made communication among the group as a whole much more efficient. I began to Twitter as “BikeTempe” to keep members of the cycling community, both local and global, up to date with the organization’s efforts. We also launched a Facebook group to facilitate communications within Facebook, find new members and in general increase our organization’s overall reach.

Since my election to the board, my involvement with bicycles seems to have progressed exponentially. I made it my mission to bring free bicycle valet service to large Tempe events. With the help of several fellow board members, I organized the first known bicycle valet in Tempe for the METRO Light Rail opening in December 2008. The event was a flop due to poor publicity and lack of visibility (we parked 6 bikes) but it did motivate us to build close to 30 valet racks from 2×4 lumber. In late February 2009 I took a 3 day course to become a League of American Bicyclists certified League Cycling Instructor. Shortly after, I organized the first known bike valet at Tempe Beach Park for the 2009 Tempe Beer Festival. This event was a big success, we parked about 120 bikes over the course of the two day festival. Also along the way I’ve participated in Bike Saviours’ 8 week bicycle maintenance class, helped pick up bike donations made to Bike Saviours, bought a workstand and bike specific toolkit, bought several more bicycles including a French tandem, consumed many good beers at many bike filled board meetings, and am currently working with CAzBike.org to put together a regular schedule of League of American Bicyclists bicycle education in Tempe as well as begin a commuter workshop to be taught at the Phoenix Permaculture Guild.

My time spent as of late has been on thoughts of how to break into the bicycle industry as a career, or at a minimum open some sort of bicycle related business. My eventual goal is to become a framebuilder and this fits well with my current welding & metalworking hobby.

Well, this certainly has turned out to be quite the introductory blog post (844 words per WordPress as of this sentence). I hope to share many more bike related thoughts with the general public, along with a smattering of non bike related posts. Cheers!